Israel Thursday night, March 15, gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the five-day missile offensive from Gaza or expect IDF action against the shooters. debkafile reports that the missile operation has been taken over by a small group of Salafi Palestinians linked to al Qaeda. And Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar is currently visiting Tehran and being urged by his Iranian hosts to block a ceasefire so as draw the Israeli military into a messy showdown with the Salafis.

Iran and Russia poured out every kind of assistance to shore Assad up – military, intelligence, financial, diplomatic and strategic as well as a supply of arms for crushing the opposition. Iran’s reward is the substantial strengthening of its alliance with Syria, Hizballah and Palestinian extremists. Hamas too is staying in the Iranian fold.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood secretly turned to mending its fences with Iran on the back of the Israeli-Palestinian clash over the Gaza Strip using Hamas as go-between. The Sunni Brotherhood, the dominant political force in post-Mubarak Egypt, decided two weeks ago to forge ties with Shiite Iran, causing a major upset for United States and Israeli policies.

Tehran is capitalizing on its allies’ two perceived victories: Bashar Assad’s success in seizing Idlib from rebel hands and the Palestinian Jihad Islami’s triumphal missile assault from Gaza on southern Israel. The Iranians are moving forward with plans to match that assault with a Hizballah offensive on northern Israel from Lebanon. This was the object of a rendezvous opposite Metulah Wednesday, March 14, between a high-ranking Iranian delegation headed by Ahmadinejad’s spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr and Hizballah intelligence officers.

Iran and Russia both won ground on the Syrian battlefield at America’s expense with this week’s Assad victory over rebels in Idlib, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s strategic analysts in its next issue out Friday. The indecisive way the Israeli confrontation with Iran’s Palestinian proxy Jihad Islami wound down also added points to Tehran - and Moscow less directly - after Washington backed away from the Gaza episode and Israel threw in the sponge. These players were testing the ground for a possible Israeli-Iranian clash.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here

Six mortar rounds exploded on empty ground in the Eshkol farm district abutting on the Gaza Strip shortly before Tuesday March 13 noon, less than 12 hours after Cairo announced a ceasefire. debkafile reports Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, are resolved to keep up a low level of fire on Israeli civilian locations so as to establish their prerogative for shooting at will regardless of any ceasefire deals. Israel is apt to accept this arrangement to avoid a head-on clash.

A major Saudi oil pipeline was indeed blown despite Riyadh’s disclaimers and more Iran-instigated sabotage of its oil sector is to be expected – either by covert Iranian squads, local Shiites or Hizballah.

Opposite the fragmented Free Syrian Army rebels, Assad’s army is suffering from the spreading malaise of “defections in place,” a mutiny of complete units with their officers who defy orders but refrain from crossing to the opposition. Why did the Syrian ruler prevent two Iranian warships from entering Tartus port?

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are fighting to the finish for the supremacy of their factions in Iran’s March 2 general election unheeding of the mounting political chaos in Tehran, international sanctions or the threat of war.

Israel and Britain are not on the same page, but both are smearing Iran for their own reasons: Netanyahu is concerned that sanctions against Iran will boost its urge to attack Israeli targets abroad, while the British fear the London Olympics of July 2012 will be targeted for joint Iranian-al Qaeda attacks.

Bent on Bashar Assad’s ouster, the US and the Gulf Arab powers are swinging around an array of options – all of them military. The coming DEBKA-Net-Weeklyout Friday weighs the chances of, say, an international militia, protected zones, a Western-Arab air umbrella for the Syrian resistance or, most probably, arming the Syrian Free Army with heavy weapons.
Decisions hinge heavily on the regional and international frictions pulling the US, Russia, the Sunni powers, Iran and Israel into the Syrian maelstrom.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here

Straight after terrorists targeted Israeli embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi, Monday, Feb. 13, Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz convened an urgent conference with Military Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavy, Air Force commander Ido Nehushtan and Operations Division chief Maj. Gen. Yaakov Ayash. Their discussion went beyond the immediate import of the two incidents to focus on the broader ramifications of a potential attack with Israeli fatalities and its impact on the prospects of war.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday, Feb. 12: “We know exactly who was responsible for attacking Israeli officials abroad and we shall respond.” He referred to the bombs attached to the cars of two Israeli officials. One blew up in New Delhi, injuring Talya Yehoshua-Koren, wife of Defense Ministry representative to India, and three others. The other bomb was discovered in time by the car’s owner, a local embassy employee in Tbilisi, Georgia. Israeli diplomats and foreign officials were ordered to stop using their own vehicles.

Russia has a comprehensive long-term plan to overtake - or at least match - America as a world superpower and it therefore extends a helping hand to any Middle East and Arab power, principally Syria and Iran, willing to defy Washington. Moscow is also betting on Bashar Assad winning the Syrian conflict.

US President Barack Obama, by asserting Sunday, Feb. 5, he doesn't think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran, sought to keep Israel away from military action and set aside as a strategic reserve, while using its threat of attack to bring Iran to the table. Monday, Feb. 6, Bashar Assad reportedly redoubled his deadly assault on Homs and, for the first time, Aleppo, taking advantage of the respite granted him by the Russian-Chinese veto. Syria is now a hub of the US-Iranian confrontation.

To pierce the layers of armor devised by Syrian, Russian and Iranian strategists to keep Assad afloat, the Western-Arab bloc is recruiting top Syrian generals to march on Damascus and unseat the dictator.

Hamas-Damascus, contrary to Western reports, is firmly maintaining its ties with the Assad regime and the Iranian officials posted to the Syrian capital and Beirut as well as Hizballah, debkafile's sources report. Neither is Hamas seeking to break its ties with Iran, its arms and cash supplier for years. Indeed, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is seizing on the coming Tehran visit by Hamas' Gazan Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as opening a back door for mending its fences with the Iranian leadership.

President Bashar Assad Sunday, Jan. 30, pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored division commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the north to Damascus, debkafile reports exclusively. He deployed them in battle positions in the capital for the first time following an intelligence tipoff that one of the armored division commanders had been won over by Western powers and persuaded to stage a coup d'etat in time for Tuesday's UN Security Council meeting on Syria.

Argentine has captured a three-man Iranian-Hizballah cell and is hunting for the rest of the network, debkafile exclusive sources reveal. It was nabbed in San Carlos de Bariloche, popular with Israeli backpackers touring the Andes. Their network is suspected of plotting attacks on the local Habad center, one of ten in the country, part of a worldwide terrorist offensive against Israeli and Jewish targets which was stopped short twice this month in Thailand and Azerbaijan. Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Mexico are also on terror alert.

The Saudis are building up their defenses in the Eastern oil provinces, calculating that Iran is already losing customers for its oil, cutting its exports by 15-20 percent and bringing Tehran closer than ever to striking the kingdom's oil industry and exports.